HITECH in a nutshell

In 2009 the government passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law.  Within this law, more than $19 billion dollars has been allocated to encourage the adoption of health information technology by physicians and hospitals.  This bill is called the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act or HITECH Act.  Another term is called “Meaningful Use”.

According to the act, physicians are eligible to receive up to $44,000.00 over a 5 year period showing they are using an electronic medical record in a meaningful way.   After the attestation year of 2011, CMS will have a method in place to prove your compliance.   CMS just released the governing body to certify all EMR’s.

In light of the new demands and requirements that the HITECH Act has put on healthcare organizations, as well as the introduction of more severe penalties, organizations need to get started with a strategy immediately.

Is your EMR software company testing its compliance?  Most of the criteria that will be mandated is available to review, but may be updated as time goes on.  Can your office handle implementing some of the changes within this act?  There could be some flow changes to occur in order to comply with those objectives.    Is your billing agency compliant and taking steps to report to CMS your HITECH coding?  That’s a big question that seems to elude most practices that do not directly bill from their EMR.

While CMS publishes updates, Euthenia Marketing will keep you posted so you can keep apprised of the many changes occurring in our field.

For more information go to the Medicare site for Meaningful Use Overview:
http://www.cms.gov/EHRIncentivePrograms/30_Meaningful_Use.asp